Diary of a Drug Fiend

238 The Diary of a Drug Fiend Weltschmertz; the universal SOITOW wherein “ Creation groaneth and travaileth until now.’ I understood Basil’s wish that we should undertake the fearful experiment which had brought us to such extremity. My insanity had been the result of my selfish vanity. I was not singled out for a unique destiny. The realisation of my own suffering had led me to understand that every one else was in the same boat. I could see even the false note of the contempt of the poet for those who had not experienced his own sublimity of horror. “And you, you puritan others, Who have missed the morphia craving, Cry scorn if I call you brothers, Curl lip at my maniac raving, Fools, seven times beguiled, You have not known her? Well! There was never a need she smiled To harry you into hell!” The pride of Satan, in the deepness of damnation, has a fall when he realises that others are in a same calamity—without having been at such perverse pains to get there. He only attains the truth when he becomes wholly impersonal, in the final paragraph. ** Morphia is but one Spark of its secular fire. She is the single sun— Type of all desire ! All that you would you are— And that is the crown of a craving. You are slaves of the wormwood star. Analysed, reason is Taving.. Feeling, examined, is pain. What heaven were to hope for a doubt of it! Life is anguish, insane; And death is—not a way out of it!”